


Ghosts and Loss

by Morgan_6



Series: Fireteam Wraith [1]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 02:35:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17013948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgan_6/pseuds/Morgan_6
Summary: Marcus finally lets out his emotions over his best friend and Vanguard, Cayde-6. His Ghost, Nep, is there to support him.





	Ghosts and Loss

**Author's Note:**

> This was indulgent, helped me also get out my sadness of losing Cayde. He is beloved.

Of the many years he’d been a guardian, Marcus never cried. Not when Tevis was lost in the gardens of Venus. Not when he was the one to discover Saint-14’s body atop a mountain of vex corpses. Not when he heard Taeko-3, a fellow light bearer, sacrifice herself over the comms to stop a hive ritual. People believe he didn’t cry when he discovered Cayde, on the precipice of death after the Awoken Prince put a bullet in his chest. They called him heartless. A monster. But he knew different. And that was good enough for him. 

-

His heart thudded painfully as he looked down at his fallen comrade, the one still telling jokes, being the joker. Cayde. He lay in Marcus’s arms, choking and spluttering, pieces of him sparking, the damage to his exo frame prominent. 

“Listen, Kid… This... ain’t on you...”

Marcus remained quiet, stoic, though his eyes had welled with tears long before that. He’d never been so thankful for the helmet he always deemed suffocating. He instinctively held Cayde closer as the optics of his eyes began flickering. He wanted to scream. Roar and cry with agony and fury. The Sov Prince would pay for this, even if he had to tear up the whole solar system to find him and put him down. Marcus felt his soul jolt painfully when the light in Cayde’s eyes flickered out for good and he became numb when he had to bring his body back to the Tower, to the Vanguard and try to explain why his best friend, everyone’s beloved Hunter Vanguard was dead in his arms. 

-

When he was finally alone, he returned to the small apartment he shared with his fireteam in the Tower, a few stories down where the guardians of the city resided on downtime. He usually hated lonely silences but he’d never been so thankful for the place being empty. Images and memories of Cayde swirled around his head. All the times they’d shared beers and ramen, the games of poker and even dominoes. Cayde was the one who showed him how to be a real hunter, helped him through the struggles of being a new guardian. When Marcus was dealing with the side effects of his new subclass abilities, the rapid arc energy pulsing through his veins, leaving him twitching and restless when he was so desperate to sleep. Cayde was there, holding him as it run its way through Marcus’s body. When the never-ending warmth of solar light was boiling away inside him, the irritability, the unbridled rage and fury that came with a subclass built of the sun. Cayde was there, holding him as tight as ever, rubbing his shoulders with his cool, metallic hands. When, finally, Marcus picked up the void bow of the Nightstalkers, when the dark shadows whispered to him in the night, Cayde, as always, was there to take his mind away from what belonged in the dark. 

He hadn’t realised his eyes had welled up and spilled over his cheeks until he was snapped from his flashbacks so suddenly. The pain in his chest was all too overwhelming. Marcus’s breath hitched as he let out a sob and an unbridled cry of anguish. He roared in agony, punching his fist through the wall as the pain and emptiness of Cayde’s loss washed over him, like it hadn’t sunk in until now. 

Time under the Traveller’s shadow was always a flimsy construct. Marcus had lay on his bed until the afternoon’s sun had dipped below the walls shielding the Last City. His sobs had eventually hushed to sniffled as he clung to the blankets slung across his bed. Nep finally deemed it time to leave her resting spot and floated over, hovering over him warily. Marcus’s good eye flicked up to consider her. Despite being an artificial intelligence, she recognised emotional pain when she saw it. She floated down slowly, coming the level with Marcus’s face and squishing herself against his cheek, a Ghost’s way of cuddling. Marcus made a soft noise that could’ve been a sob. His brought his hands up, cradling his little ghost close to him. He fell asleep like that, until Elaina had come to check on him and covered him with blankets.


End file.
